No Pictures Please!!!

     Last week Oliver, Ginger and I headed back to the lake house.  We weren't ten minutes away from our home when I realized I forgot the camera.  I had made detailed lists outlining our meals for each of the four days we would be gone including which groceries we would need.  I remembered bathing suits, clothes, even the Quiet Bag we needed to bring to church on Sunday.  Yet, I forgot the camera.  I contemplated turning around, but I didn't want to lose the momentum and enthusiasm we were already experiencing.  We had the book on CD playing, the mountains of stuffed animals and blankets filling the backseat, full Disney  and Scooby Doo lunchboxes by our sides, and we had already sang two triumphant verses of "On the Road Again" at the top of our lungs.  I decided to press on and do without.
     Most everybody these days would have been fine without a camera on a mini vacation because their fancy phones take pictures.  However, my phone isn't fancy.  It is barely even a phone.  Technically, it does take pictures.  Teeny, tiny ones with no way to zoom in.  I do occasionally use the camera feature but I have no idea how to get the photos off the camera onto Facebook or into print.  So it was time to face the music.  This would be a camera-less trip.

No Pictures Please!!!

     Schroon Lake is absolutely beautiful.  It is a gorgeous clear lake surrounded by pine trees.  The sun was shining, my children were being adorable and I couldn't take a single picture of any of it.  Like many other women, I have a love-hate relationship with cameras.  I love taking and having pictures of my kids.  I hate having my picture taken.  I always feel insecure and worry that I will look too fat, too old, too something.  I have been trying to overcome this mindset so my family will look back through the years and remember that I did, in fact, exist.  One major lifestyle change at a time please.  For now I am working hard at just going outside.
     Just like our last trip to the lake house, we spent most of each day at the beach.  I am still working on wanting to be outside, but I am at least better at going outside.  I may even be starting to understand why someone would choose to go out when they could stay in.  Maybe.  I think I get it as far as kids go anyway.  When you are outside you don't have to watch your volume and you can frolic and things don't get broken as easily.  You make friends with kids you don't know and you explore and you find treasures you didn't know you couldn't live without like the world's most microscopic snail shell.
     So for four days I sat in the sun watching my kids smile and splash and have the time of their lives.  I never told them it was time to go home.  I just waited until they wore themselves out.  I had my feet buried in the sand, I judged sandcastle building contests, I complained about the heat (not a lot!), and I didn't take a single picture of any of it.  So instead of capturing memories we were busy making them.